Setsuna Higashi

[passifloraincarnata]

● SETSUNA HIGASHI
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Comments

[passifloraincarnata]

[It's not mockery, it's just that the phrase "image training" is an inadequate approximation in English of the phrase Tenten's referring to and that Setsuna's thinking of, in Tenten's native language and Setsuna's second language, and Setsuna's smart enough to pick up on it and infer what the ninja actually means by the phrase anyway.]

[That said -]

I can't say I've ever really done anything like what you describe, not to that extent. I've certainly studied my opponents and contemplated their behaviors, workshopped potential strategies to compensate for their capabilities, and the like. I've studied dance routines and envisioned them in my mind ahead of actually practicing them. But I've never done that to the extent that such a thing could be so developed it might take the place of building the muscle memories necessary to make executing such preemptive considerations actually possible, per se.

... it is also quite difficult to pre-visualize such things when one's life often sees careful plans disrupted more often than not by the literally miraculous and unpredictable, such that it's been my experience to trust in the sort of seemingly unreliable things most people would never risk their lives expecting to be destroyed or saved by, like love, or dreams, or friendship, oftentimes above even the most careful of plans.

But I can see the value in the practice, I think, all the same.

[71lines]

Well, it won't build muscle memory, but it'll help plan and predict. And sometimes the only thing to do is to use opponents from your past, your friends, or even yourself.

[The number of times she's 'fought' Sakura, Lee, or the others can't be counted. Of course, neither can her losses. Or wins.]

Granted, unpredictable miracles happen. Like you said. And you can be flexible and try to predict everything, but a trap people can fall into is trying to stick too closely to their 'image' and not recognizing that things can and will be different. For instance, you've never seen me at the top of my game, so your image of me will be wrong. But with me telling you that, you might adjust too far or in the wrong way.

There are some chunin, journeymen ninjas like myself, who never get the hang of it. Some never learn how. But I think you're smart enough to get a hang of it and avoid some of the usual pitfalls.

Remember, it's as much about spotting flaws in your own technique as it is expecting the unexpected or planning for a real fight.